Twenty-eight was not a great year for me. Four years out of college, two years out of a bad break-up, I was settling into my mundane, workaday rut and facing a "quarter-life crisis." In school, each semester brought change, new classes, new people--and new opportunities to meet girls. The call center where I now worked as a stockbroker, by contrast, was just the same tired routine and the same 200-odd people in the halls day in and day out.
How was I ever going to meet anyone again? In the grocery store? At a bar? God help me! I'd had a dry spell of more than a year and it seemed like the only way to break it would be something like online dating. Not that there's anything wrong that, but it just feels so forced to me--I want to just meet someone naturally, not because I have announced my availability to the marketplace like a company listing on a stock exchange.
Just when I was ready to give up and start posting on dating websites, things changed. We'd had a few shift adjustments at the office and I'd moved to an evening team--we're in central time but we were fielding calls from traders on the west coast--and it was there that I met Claudia Minton.
I was new to the team and happy to find there were some smokers (I'm glad to say it has now been years since I've smoked but, at the time, huddling around the ashtray in the courtyard on a crisp autumn evening was the best way to socialize with coworkers). One night I ventured down to the courtyard on break to find three women from my team, Claudia, Kristen and Cynthia, all laughing out loud and, as I approached their circle, I could discern a conspiratorial tone in their laughter--they were laughing the way someone (especially a woman, to my male ear) laughs at blue humor: a bit blushingly.
As I drew near I caught bits of what they were talking about. "The nursing mother's lounge on three!" One said.
"Dude, c'mon. You're
so
getting caught in there I swear--like that whole call floor can't hear?"
"I'm telling you, janitor's closet, fifth floor elevator lobby."
"Right, 'cause nothing puts me in the mood like dingy mop-buckets and Pine Sol stank. Very hygienic."
Then, with an askance glance in my direction, Cynthia quickly said "All right, all right," and the three of them fell silent, their ebullient laughs quickly fading to suppressed chuckles and smirks. I strode up to join their circle and asked for a light.
I fired up my cigarette with deliberate slowness, allowing plenty of time for conversation to resume. When it didn't, I gave Claudia back her lighter and said: "So, what was so funny just now?" Laughter instantly burst out of all three as though from somewhere it had been stored under pressure, its container punctured by my question. There followed a chorus of unconvincing "Nothing!"s. "Nothing," I mused, taking a thoughtful drag. "Because," drag, drag, "if a person didn't know better," exhale, "they could get the could get the impression you were just debating the relative merits of various dark corners of the office--" I paused for another drag, savoring the patient expectation with which three pairs of smiling female eyes were fixed on me--"as suitable venues for illicit office sex."
Another eruption of laughter.
"Busted!" Claudia cried.
"For the win!" Kristen chimed in.
I had that warm feeling you get when you're the only man among women and you make them laugh, your stock going up due to temporary and artificial market scarcity--in my case the happy accident that none of the male brokers from our team happened to be down there smoking at just that moment. I caught them in dirty girl talk and was allowed to join in. I was in their sanctum and feeling suddenly high.
"Do you mind if I ask what prompted this scintillating line of discussion?"
"The uzhe," said Claudia. "Gossip. Catty gossip."
"Oh!" I said. "You mean somebody actually...?"
"There's a rumor," said Kristen. "That girl Shelley on five? Supposedly in the mother's lounge."
"With?"
"God,
boring
!" Claudia rolled her eyes. "Her freaking
husband
! Like she just snuck him in or whatever. What's the point of office sex if you bring it in from home? All the risk and none of the novelty." Everyone laughed at this. She lit another cigarette, then she asked, with what I thought was a note of flirtation, "Where would
you
go, Bart?"
"Me?"
"You." Okay, more than a note.
"Well, I obviously haven't given it as much thought as you nice upstanding ladies, but"--more laughter here--"you know how the second floor is all rental units? I never see anyone in those offices past 5, 6 latest. So my vote is second-floor restroom."
"We should get going," Cynthia said to Kristen. "We both came out at quarter of."
"See you guys."
"Bye."
And just like that I was alone with Claudia. I put my cigarette out in the ashtray and bummed Claudia's lighter again to start another. As I was lighting it she said, "second-floor restroom, huh?" I looked up and she was staring straight at me with what seemed to be unabashed suggestiveness. I felt a bit of a tingle in my pants. Could it be my imagination? Was she coming on to me?
She was very beautiful and seemed to know it, despite having features that many in our society alas don't associate with conventional beauty. She was--how else to put it?--quite fat. Fat has never bothered me; on the contrary, I find the big gals quite fetching, but Claudia was the kind of fat chick who caught the eye of even unreconstructed skinny lovers. The guys on our team would say things like: "She'd be fine if she lost the weight," or "She's kind of cute even in spite of...well,
you know
...."